The Politics of Time and Value: Religion, Ideology, and Metaphysics (2012/13)
Central Questions: How has the relation between immanence and transcendence been construed within the history of political thought? To what extent are the specifics of this relation reflected in theories of time and meaning, history and ethics, truth and justice? And how do these understandings affect concrete politics.
In our current age, much of political philosophy has positioned itself in a post-metaphysical landscape. Following Jürgen Habermas’s eschewal of religion and John Rawls’s claim that his theory of justice is “political, not metaphysical”, it seems that few political philosophers are willing to take a firm stance on ontological issues of time and value.
In this graduate student reading group we would like to challenge the popular avoidance of metaphysics by going back to the source: God. We would like to return to metaphysics by way of the institution that has never claimed to avoid them: Religion. By exploring the role of religion, god, and transcendence in political texts, we hope to come to new perspectives on the role of metaphysics in contemporary political thought.
Our schedule offers a mixture of religious and philosophic texts. We will explore theological conceptions of God and transcendence, as well as the concrete praxis of religion. The readings are designed to challenge the division of thought and praxis, of metaphysics and politics. The format is a two year reading group. We will host 1.5-2hr meetings once every two weeks. Our hope is to invite guest speakers once a month who are experts on these texts to join in our discussions and shed light on some of our central questions. The possible guest speakers will not be presenting current work (as in a workshop format), but will be invited to speak about articles they have written on the topics being discussed that day.
The Reading group is generously funded by the MacMillan Center Initiative on Religion, Politics, and Society at Yale University
People
Guest Speakers
Fall 2013
- Thomas Pogge (Director of the Global Justice Program and Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs, Yale University)
- Jennifer Herdt (Yale Divinity School)
- Vittorio Hösle (Department Of German and Russian Languages & Literatures, University of Notre Dame)
Spring 2013
- Anthony Kronman (Yale Law School)
- Paul Franks (Yale University, Philosophy)
- Peter Gordon (Harvard University, History)
- Martin Hägglund (Yale University, Comparative Literature)
Fall 2012
- Philip Gorski (Yale University, Sociology)
- Frederick Beiser (Syracuse University, Philosophy)
- James Murphy (Dartmouth College, Government)
- Julie Cooper (University of Chicago, Political Science)
- Steven Smith (Yale University, Political Science)
Organizers
- Carmen Dege (Yale University, Political Science)
- Lisa Gilson (Yale University, Political Science)
- Samuel Loncar (Yale University, Religious Studies)
- Rebecca Traber (Yale University, Political Science)
- Paul Linden-Retek (Yale University, Political Science)